It was great to get to see some of the family last weekend. Jason and Tamara are looking at a house in Odessa that they may buy, so Heather, Jim, and I went over to look at it with them. I pray that everything works out for them to get the house and get it fixed up like they want to. Jason is working for Lufkin and really likes what he’s doing now. His job involves working with electrical components and electronics on wellheads, and I think he is able to use some of the experience he gained through the networking program at WTC. Tamara is taking classes at UTPB and plans to graduate next May with a degree in Business. She has been such a wonderful addition to our family, and I enjoy visiting with her over the phone or email. She’s making plans for the new house and staying really busy.

Josh wanted me to come by to see his office at Chevron in the Claydesta center in Midland. He seems to be enjoying his job, (his official title is “Compression Optimization Engineer” – I don’t have a clue either ), and they’ve been flying him all over creation over the past few weeks, which I know must be tiresome. He flew to Tulsa last week on the corporate jet, and called to tell me it was “Sweet!” I talked to him on the phone a minute ago. He’d just gotten home from a canoing trip to Junction with some of his friends and only had 2 hours before flying out to Dallas for the next 3 days. Like a typical mom, I worry about him flying so much, but at least it keeps him off that darned motorcycle! Heather is working 2 jobs and running her legs off. It was good to visit with all of them, if only for a short time, and to see the plans that they are making for their futures.

(Oh, and I don’t want to forget Samson and Lilly - short for Delilah :0) – and Katie, Buster and Turbo, or as Tamara calls them, the “grandpups,” and Sly and Ramona, their two cats. I guess they are the “grandkittens.”

Today, we’re headed from Ringwood, Illinois (another Chicago suburb) to Lawrenceville, Tennessee, which is about 100 miles south of Nashville. We’re passing through Louisville, Kentucky as I write this, and the roads are a little bumpy, so please excuse my typos. :0) we’re hauling some kind of air conditioner condensers, but I’m not sure what they go on.
We waited for awhile in St. Paul for our next load, then received an offer to take a shipment from Burnsville, Minnesota to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As soon as we headed that way, we received a second offer for this load we’re on now from Ringwood to Lawrenceville. The time frame allowed us to drop the first load before the second one needed to be picked up, so we accepted both of them. That doesn’t happen very often, but it’s nice when it does because you can plan your schedule for a few days in advance (something else that doesn’t happen often in this business.) Strange thing, because just as I was typing this, we received an offer to go from Decatur, Alabama to Auburn, New York, so I guess that’s where we’ll head after this load. The good thing is that there will be 24 hours between the two, so we can look around Lawrenceburg and get plenty of rest before heading out on the next one. Auburn is in about the center of the state, so maybe we’ll bet to see some of the fall changes in the foliage. We took some pictures of the leaves changing as we came through Wisconsin yesterday. It was a sight to see.

When we arrived at the shipper in Burnsville, it was a large monogramming factory. The lady in charge let me take a few pictures of the sewing machines and multiple colors of threads as long as I agreed not to take any with workers in them. I thought of Mom and Tamara because they both like to sew. They would have enjoyed seeing this, I think. There were rows and rows of these machines, with one person watching over one set as they monogrammed 10-15 items at once. Most were T-Shirts, but the ones we were hauling were small white sports towels. They loaded six pallets full of boxes onto the truck, which amounted to over 40,000 towels. We thought maybe we were hauling them to a hotel chain or something, but after looking over the consignee information and zooming in on the location we were headed to on the map, we figured out that we were headed to the Milwaukee Brewers baseball stadium.

We thought it would be pretty neat to deliver there, but had no idea that there would be a game in progress. We got to town around 9pm, and as we neared our exit, we could see the bright lights from the stadium, which was packed with sports fans. We’ve passed by a lot of the major league stadiums, but this one was the most impressive one we’ve seen. It’s built on a hill, so you can see it from just about anywhere in the city. We pulled into the parking lot, but since we weren’t scheduled to unload until the next morning, we decided to wait. I called Panther and talked to one of the dispatchers named David to tell him that we weren’t going to deliver until morning because there was a game going on. Apparently, they had no idea where the load was going, because he said, “No way! That’s so cool.” When we came back, we were unloading at a dock next to the recording both for the media. They were interviewing a guy that we assumed was one of the players, but, not being familiar with the Brewers, we had no idea who he was.

Jim told you a little bit about the place we’re looking at in Junction. It’s such a dream, that I’m almost afraid to think about it too much. Not that it is, or ever would be, a huge resort or anything, but a beautiful place that might make us a living while providing a nice retreat for friends and family. It’s on a nice piece of the river and has the potential to be everything we’ve wanted in a working retirement. Owning a place like this is the main reason we decided to do what we’re doing now. We’re getting all of the traveling out of our system because when you own a park like this, you are pretty much tied down to one place. It would be a good place to be tied to, I think. Please pray for God’s will in this endeavor. He may have some other place planned for us, but we’ll never know unless we pursue the possibilities.

We made it to Lawrenceburg with 7 hours to spare. We bought some folding bikes the other day, so we may try them out by exploring the Davy Crockett State Park. Lawrenceburg is the home of Fred Thompson, and the whole towns seems to plan to vote for him in 2008. Anyway, it’s a beautiful day today, and the scenery here is beautiful. I’ll attach a few pictures after I upload this post.

Please stay in touch, we love to hear from all of you.
Love,
Jim and Sandy